Clicky

Rite Jews

Monday, January 25, 2010

I would have written about this story sooner, but only learned about it after managing to catch up with my Rush podcasts today.

Late last week Rush Limbaugh was accused of anti-Semitism by the ADL and subsequently defended by two Jewish conservatives. The story begins last Wednesday (Jan. 20), when Rush was talking about Norman Podhoretz’s new book Why Are Jews Liberal? Like Podhoretz, a right-leaning Jew, Rush was wondering why Jews still overwhelmingly vote Democrat when their policies are so contrary to their values (a premise with which I, also a right-leaning Jew, also believe to be valid). Rush also wondered whether Jewish Americans, 78% of whom voted for Obama, were especially experiencing buyer’s remorse, considering demonstrable evidence that the man and his closest connections are virulently anti-Israel and anti-Semitic.

Then Rush made this observation about Obama and his administration’s demonization of the banks. (Certain words are highlighted that will have significance later in this post):

Look, folks, there are a lot of people who when you say “banker,” people think “Jewish.” People who have prejudice is the best way to put it. They have a little prejudice about them. So for some people, “banker” is code word for “Jewish,” and guess who Obama’s assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people, and a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there. Anyway, if you have often asked that question — if you’ve been puzzled by so many Jewish people voting liberal, voting Democrat — give Norman’s book a shout.

Sounds like the words of a raving Jew-hater, huh? Not quite. On the contrary, when I heard this, I thought Rush made a completely valid point: Obama’s been going after the bankers, and a lot of bankers are Jewish. He’s also been attacking the health care industry, including doctors, and lots of physicians are Jews. You would think if so many Jewish Americans are having their professions attacked and their livelihood threathened by the very man they voted for, you’d expect some buyer’s remorse! That was the point of Rush’s monologue; that’s how I took it and I can’t even imagine how anyone could interpret it otherwise. In fact, if I heard this show live—It was about two days after when I finally listened to the podcast—I would have called into the show to talk about the frustrations of Jewish conservatives such as myself.

But someone did interpret this as something else. Abe Foxman at the Anti-Defamation League accused Rush of anti-Semitism!

New York, NY, January 21, 2010 … The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said Rush Limbaugh reached a new low with “borderline anti-Semitic comments” on his radio show, in which he raised the possibility that liberal Jews were having “buyer’s remorse” with President Obama in light of the outcome of the Senate election in Massachusetts.

Limbaugh told his listeners: “To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.”

Did you notice what the ADL did here? They omitted the first three sentences of Rush’s full quote (which I provide above) to make it look like he himself was making the bankers=Jews smear.

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

Rush Limbaugh reached a new low with his borderline anti-Semitic comments about Jews as bankers, their supposed influence on Wall Street, and how they vote.

Limbaugh’s references to Jews and money in a discussion of Massachusetts politics were offensive and inappropriate. While the age-old stereotype about Jews and money has a long and sordid history, it also remains one of the main pillars of anti-Semitism and is widely accepted by many Americans. His notion that Jews vote based on their religion, rather than on their interests as Americans, plays into the hands of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists.

When he comes to understand why his words were so offensive and unacceptable, Limbaugh should apologize.

How in G0d’s name could Foxman have interpreted any of Rush’s comments as anti-Semitic? If anything, he was defending Jewish Americans against Obama and against genuine anti-Semites who make hateful smears against Jews by calling them “bankers” or “money-changers.” It is a typical meme among the anti-Semitic that Jews run the country/world by controlling the banks. Anybody who has listened to Rush Limbaugh as regularly as I do will know that he never expressed such views as his own. Yet somehow, Foxman takes words that Rush as distinctly attributing to other people and makes them his own. That is low, and it is slanderous.

In my new book, “Why Are Jews Liberals?”, I argue that it no longer makes any sense for so many of my fellow Jews to go on aligning themselves with the forces of the Left. I also try to show that our interests and our ideals, both as Americans and as Jews, have come in recent decades to be better served by the forces of the Right.
In the course of describing and agreeing with the book the other day, Rush Limbaugh cited a few of the numerous reasons for the widespread puzzlement over the persistence of liberalism within the American Jewish community. And while discussing those reasons, he pointed to the undeniable fact that for “a lot of people”—prejudiced people, as he called them twice—the words “banker” and “Wall Street” are code words for “Jewish.” Was it possible, he wondered, that Obama’s attacks on bankers and Wall Street were triggering a certain amount of buyer’s remorse within the American Jewish community, which gave him 78% of its vote? Finally, taking off from my observation that many Jewish liberals like to call themselves independents, he wondered whether a fair number of the self-described independents who deserted Obama and voted for Scott Brown might actually have been Jewish liberals. If so, he concluded, Brown’s “victory could be even more indicative of an even bigger change in the political temper of the country than has so far been recognized.”
For this, Rush Limbaugh has been subjected to a vile attack by Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League. Of course, Mr. Foxman has a long history of seeing an anti-Semite under every conservative bed while blinding himself to the blatant fact that anti-Semitism has largely been banished from the Right in the past forty years, and that it has found a hospitable new home on the Left, especially where Israel is concerned. This makes Foxman a perfect embodiment of the phenomenon I analyze in “Why Are Jews Liberals?” Now Foxman has the chutzpah to denounce Rush Limbaugh as an anti-Semite and to demand an apology from him to boot. Well, if an apology is owed here, it is the national director of the Anti-Defamation League who should apologize for the defamatory accusation of anti-Semitism that he himself has hurled against so loyal a friend of Israel as Rush Limbaugh.

Norman Podhoretz quite properly takes Anti-Defamation League czar Abe Foxman to task for insinuating that Rush is somehow a Jew-hater for wondering if Jewish voters are having buyer’s remorse regarding Obama. They certainly should, both because of Obama’s striking nastiness to Israel and of his attacks on “greedy bankers” (which Rush mentioned), free broadcasting, and of course the crusade against American medicine, all enterprises in which Jews have long flourished.
Rush should be a hero to Foxman and American Jews, but they are so blindly partisan that they can no longer distinguish between their friends and their enemies. Foxman has relentlessly attacked American Evangelicals — arguably the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel people in America — but conveniently disappears when the government goes after real Jews for presumed “dual loyalty.” Which, one might say, is the core principle of the ADL.
Foxman wants Rush to apologize. Nuts. I want Foxman retired and replaced by somebody who fights for Jews and our friends.

On Friday’s show, Rush mentioned Foxman’s statement and Podhoretz’s and Ledeen’s responses. He first requested that if any listener knew how to contact Foxman, that they should tell him to put on Rush’s show in the next few minutes. Then, after a commercial break, he said:

Now, anybody who listens to this program even marginally knows that this program is and has consistently been one of the most outspoken supporters of the Jewish people and of Israel in particular.
And Mr. Foxman knows this as well. What I suspect is the usual thing that happened. Somebody took a few words that I said in a pretty long monologue, cut them up, and published them in a way to make it appear I said something that I didn’t say, and rather than check it out... And by now I would think anybody in the mainstream media or in any mainstream American endeavor, after 20 years of these types of attacks — me being taken out of context and every one of them being shown to be wrong, every one of these attacks being shown to be fallacious — I would think that by now some people would realize what’s going on. But I don’t think that they do. I think they want these attacks to be real. I think they want the out-of-context quotes to be real. It’s just like during this NFL controversy, when there were purely fabricated quotes of me that were plastered all over the American media: newspapers, websites, television. …

Mr. Foxman, if you really want to go after anti-Semitism you should first start looking at it on the left and within the Obama administration and within his circle of friends, because that’s why you’re going to find it. You’re not going to find anti-Semitism on this radio show. You’re going to find nothing but love and respect and admiration for the Jewish people and an unwavering support for Israel that has not ever shaken. I was referring to the Jew haters, the bigots. Twice I referred to “prejudiced people.” …

That’s what the Democrat Party has become: A coalition of all these disparate groups — the civil rights coalitions, the animal rights groups, feminism, the Hollywood left, all this stuff — and they all have one mission, and that is they hate conservatives and Republicans and they love government, and they have big problems with capitalism. So they’re all united in trying to destroy capitalism — or limit it, or blame it — and make America more like a Western European, socialist democracy. Anyway, thanks to Mr. Podhoretz for his reply, also to Michael Ledeen. But Mr. Foxman, not only am I not going to apologize, I’m going to say you should be embarrassed and next time call me if you think I’ve said something anti-Semitic or call somebody that knows me and find out what I actually said rather than trusting your friends on the left to accurately report what I said. I was in the midst of promoting, because I think it was worthwhile, the work of a celebrated and brilliant American Jew: Norman Podhoretz, and you refer to me as “borderline anti-Semitic.” That doesn’t compute, Mr. Foxman.

What a crying shame it is that Rush even has to waste time on his show rehashing these events and defend/clarify himself.

Now, all this transpired between last Wednesday and Friday, but I didn’t even hear about it until today (Monday) while catching up with Rush’s podcasts. The weekend turned out to be so busy I didn’t even catch wind of the story on-line. Had I been listening to either Wednesday’s or Friday’s show live, I would have definitely called in to agree with Rush’s original point, and to lend my voice to his defense against this disingenuous accusation of anti-Semitism.

So far, Foxman has not responded to Rush’s counterargument, and he probably won’t. Like Ledeen says, he looks for anti-Semitism underneath every rock and therefore waters down the notion anti-Semitism so much that one no longer is able to distinguish imagined instances of bigotry with authentic ones. And who suffers mostly from that grave mistake? Jews.

To add insult to injury, left-wing sites are siding with Abe Foxman, apparently not even concerned with Rush’s actual statements and intentions. This is what the Left does: Jump on every tiny phrase and take it out of context to fit their preconceived notion that Rush Limbaugh is a racist, sexist, anti-Semitic homophobe. At the lefty Talking Points Memo blog, a very uninformed contributor named M.J. Rosenberg writes:

Rush Limbaugh is clearly stung by the accusations that he is an anti-semite. This is after he employed the old National Socialist canard that Jews and bankers are one and the same.

I have no doubt that racist Rush is a Jew hater. Racists of the Limbaugh stripe invariably despise Jews. But Rush surely could care less what liberals like me think.

He does care what Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League thinks and when he calls Rush an anti-semite, Rush gets worried.

He is so worried that he apparently called on the founder of neoconservativism, the father of John Podhoretz and father-in-law of Elliot Abrams to defend him against the liberal Jews. …

And this is what my liberal friends consider a reliable and intelligent news analysis site. Is there anything in this excerpt that has a morsel of truth in it? Hardly. First, Rush did not employ “the old National Socialist canard that Jews and bankers are one and the same.”; he was criticizing other, bigoted people who use it.

Second, of course Rosenberg has “no doubt that racist Rush is a Jew hater.” Rosenberg has presumably never listened to Rush before; like so many others who dislike him or have slandered him in the public arena get their offensive “sound bites” after they have been filtered through unreliable sources who have doctored, cherry-picked, or completely fabricated them. It’s called l’shon ha-ra (“evil tongue”)—malicious gossip.

Third, how the heck does this Rosenberg know that Rush called Norman Podhoretz and asked him to defend him? He doesn’t, nor is there any indication of it. So not only does Rosenberg slander Rush in this diatribe, but Podhoretz as well.

Finally, Rosenberg rejects Podhoretz’s defense as legitimate by focusing on only one of his arguments, namely that Rush is a staunch friend of Israel. That, of course, was not the sole argument made by Podhoretz, but by manipulating it to appear that way, Rosenberg artificially turns Podhoretz’s defense into a house of cards. Shameful.

At a Jewish e-zine called Tablet, some genius named Marc Tracy (presumably also Jewish?) presents this shallow analysis:

Podhoretz to Foxman: No, the anti-Semites are on the left! Besides, Limbaugh likes Israel, which means he cannot possibly be an anti-Semite!

This has been productive!

One thing that has not been productive is the time spent reading Tracy’s unenlightened “analysis” of the issue.

This is yet another disgusting and fallacious smear of one of the Left’s most threatening enemies. And, from my standpoint, I find it even more disgusting when it’s carried out by fellow Jews. There is real anti-Semitism out there, and a lot of it—nay, most of it—occurs on the Left, including some of Barack Obama’s closest connections.

Friday, December 25, 2009

Well, here it is, my annual Top 10 favorite Dennis Prager articles of the year. Indeed Dennis had a lot to write about this year. It was so hard narrowing 46 pieces down to just ten favorites, there are actually two “honorable mentions” at the end of this post. (Prager, in my opinion, is so intelligent, eloquent, and morally well-founded, that in all honesty, virtually all of his pieces deserve honorable mention.) Enjoy, and feel free to comment.

… In a nutshell, the stimulus plan is not a stimulus plan. It is the largest spending program in U.S. history. In the words of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman editorial that supports the bill, “The essence of the bill is to spend money …”

Almost everything about it is dishonest.

Its name is dishonest. It is a spending bill, not a stimulus bill. Its announced aim is dishonest. It purports to stimulate the economy. But its real aim is to push America toward becoming a Western European socialist welfare state.

The way it was enacted — the speed, the lack of transparency — was dishonest. As the Wall Street Journal wrote, “Democrats rushed the bill to the floor before Members could even read it, much less have time to broadcast the details so the public could offer its verdict.”

Even the spending is dishonest. The bulk of the spending will take place over years, not now, which is the whole point of a stimulus.

For these reasons, the bill could be renamed the Madoff Bill. Not because there are any parallels between characters of its authors and the character of Bernard Madoff. There aren’t. But there are parallels between the methods. Madoff took people’s money, promised to give them benefits, while in fact squandering their money — to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. So, too, the president and the Democrats are taking Americans’ money, squandering most of it — to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, while promising to give them a benefit, a stimulus, when in fact they are spending the money. As Harvard economist Robert Barro told the Atlantic, “It’s wasting a tremendous amount of money … I don’t think it will expand the economy. … I think it’s garbage.”

Even its defenders, now that the bill is passed, do not defend it as a stimulus bill. Typical was New York Times columnist Frank Rich, who devoted his essay to the stimulus plan but only attacked Republicans. He did not devote one of his 1,500 words to defending the bill as a stimulus package.

Even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., described the bill with words having nothing to do with stimulus: “By investing in new jobs, in science and innovation, in energy, in education ... we are investing in the American people, which is the best guarantee of the success of our nation.”

No one should be surprised. Americans voted for a man who said time and time again that he wanted to “transform” America. He and his party are trying to do precisely that.

… “The Golden State — which a decade ago was the booming technology capital of the world — has been done in by two decades of chronic overspending, overregulating and a hyperprogressive tax code …”

One might argue that’s this is a politically biased assessment. So here are some facts, not assessments:

California’s state expenditures grew from $104 billion in 2003 to $145 billion in 2008.

California has the worst credit rating in the nation.

California has the fourth highest unemployment rate in the nation, 9.3 percent — higher even than the car manufacturing state of Michigan.

California has the second highest home foreclosure rate.

California’s tax-paying middle class is leaving the state. California’s net loss last year in state-to-state migration exceeded every other state’s. New York, another left-run state, was second.

Since 2000, California’s job growth rate — which in the late 1970s was many times higher than the national average — has lagged behind the national average by almost 20 percent.

California has lost 25 percent of its industrial work force since 2001. …

Take the Boy Scouts. For generations, the Boy Scouts, founded and preserved by Americans of all political as well as ethnic backgrounds, has helped millions of American boys become good, productive men. The left throughout America — its politicians, its media, its stars, its academics — have ganged up to deprive the Boy Scouts of oxygen. Everywhere possible, the Boy Scouts are vilified and deprived of places to meet.

But while the left works to destroy the Boy Scouts — unless the Boy Scouts adopt the left’s views on openly gay scouts and scout leaders — the left has created nothing comparable to the Boy Scouts. The left tries to destroy one of the greatest institutions ever made for boys, but it has built nothing for boys. There is no ACLU version of the Boy Scouts; there is only the ACLU versus the Boy Scouts.

The same holds true for the greatest character-building institution in American life: Judeo-Christian religions. Once again, the left knows how to destroy. Everywhere possible the left works to inhibit religious institutions and values — from substituting “Happy Holidays” for “Merry Christmas” to removing the tiny cross from the Los Angeles County Seal to arguing that religious people must not bring their values into the political arena.

And, then there is education. Until the left took over American public education in the second half of the 20th century, it was generally excellent — look at the high level of eighth-grade exams from early in the 20th century and you will weep. The more money the left has gotten for education — America now spends more per student than any country in the world — the worse the academic results. And the left has removed G-d and dress codes from schools — with socially disastrous results. …

… Th[e] preoccupation with brains and intellectual attainment extends into adulthood. Most Americans upon hearing that someone has attended Harvard University assumes that this person is not only smarter than most other people but is actually a more impressive person. That is why, for example, people assume that a Nobel laureate in physics has something particularly intelligent to say about social policy. In fact, there is no reason at all to assume that a Nobel physicist has more insight into health care issues or capital punishment than a high school physics teacher, let alone more insight than a moral theologian. But people, especially the highly educated, do think so. That’s why one frequently sees ads advocating some political position signed by Nobel laureates.

Intellectuals, e.g., those with graduate degrees, have among the worst, if not the worst, records on the great moral issues of the past century. Intellectuals such as the widely adulated French intellectual Jean Paul Sartre were far more likely than hardhats to admire butchers of humanity like Stalin and Mao. But this has had no impact on most people’s adulation of the intellect and intellectuals.

So, too, the current economic decline was brought about in large measure by people in the financial sector widely regarded as “brilliant.” Of course, it turns out that many of them were either dummies, amoral, incompetent, or all three.

The adulation of the intellect is one reason President George W. Bush was so reviled by the intellectual class. He didn’t speak like an intellectual (even though he graduated from Yale) and for that reason was widely dismissed as a dummy (though he is, in fact, very bright). On the other hand, Barack Obama speaks like the college professor he was and thereby seduces the adulators of the intellect the moment he opens his mouth. Yet, it is he, not George W. Bush, who nearly always travels with teleprompters to deliver even the briefest remarks. And compared to George W. Bush on many important issues, his talks are superficial — as reading, as opposed to hearing, them easily reveals. …

In his latest address — on Guantanamo detainees — President Obama said something of extraordinary importance that seems to have been missed by the media:

“I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more…I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation.”

As this President chooses his words carefully, these claims need to be understood.

Note that Mr. Obama did not say what nearly all opponents of water-boarding say — that water-boarding is not an effective method of extracting reliable, life-saving, information. He took no issue with former Vice-President Dick Cheney’s claims that water-boarding or “enhanced interrogation” saved American and other lives. Indeed, he clearly leaves open the possibility, even the likelihood, that this claim is accurate. Rather, what he says is that “methods like water-boarding were not necessary to keep us safe” — not necessary, not ineffective. And why does he believe this? Because they are not “the most effective means of interrogation.”

In other words, the President’s view seems to be that water-boarding the three terrorists did elicit vital, life-saving, information. However, he contends that we could have obtained all that information using means of interrogation that were both non-brutal and more effective.

I pray the President is right. I would love America to be able to say “America never uses brutal methods of interrogation, let alone tortures” while simultaneously obtaining information it needs from captured terrorists to save thousands of innocent people from death and maiming.

But if in fact, these methods exist, they have never been revealed. President Obama needs to share this discovery with the American people, or, if they must be state secrets, with a select few individuals from Congress and the intelligence community.

It is as if the President, or anyone else, announced that brutal methods of combating cancer like chemotherapy and radiation were “not the most effective means” of combating cancer — and then refused to say what non-brutal means were more effective.

This is the paramount issue in the water-boarding debate. As Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said five years ago, it is essentially a no-brainer that we must “do what you have to do” if we apprehend a terrorist who has the information that can prevent an imminent terrorist attack.

Most opponents of water-boarding terrorists rely on the belief that such a method is as unnecessary as it is illegal. Therefore, if it is shown that water-boarding did in fact provide information that saved many innocent lives, opponents have to argue one of two positions: that there was a better, non-brutal, method available; or that it is morally preferable to have innocent Americans and others killed, brain damaged, blinded, and paralyzed rather than water-board a single terrorist. …

”The administration has remained as quiet as possible during the Iranian election season and in the days of street protests since Friday’s vote.” — Washington Post , Monday June 15, 2009 …

For those who look to “world opinion,” “the opinion of mankind,” or to the United Nations for moral guidance or for coming to the aid of victims of oppression, the past few days and presumably the next few days in Iran, provide yet another example of their uselessness.

A million or more Iranians are demonstrating against last Friday’s obviously stolen election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the world — except for the lowlifes who rule places like Venezuela and Syria and who immediately sent their effusive congratulations to Ahmadinejad — is quiet. The world is “closely following the situation,” just as it followed the situations of the Jews during the Holocaust, the Ukrainians, the Chinese under Mao, the Rwandans, the Cambodians, Tibetans, and so many others.

I have long believed that the citizens of most free countries do not deserve the gift of freedom that they have. Few have any interest in promoting freedom, only in having it for themselves. Insofar as other countries are concerned what matters to most free countries, as to dictatorships, is power.

That is what America and Europe are watching — where the power in Iran will go. Whoever wins will get free America and free Europe’s respect.

Now it may be argued that if the American president speaks out in support of those demonstrating for free elections in Iran, it will be counterproductive.

How exactly? What will the unelected President Ahmadinejad and the unelected Supreme Ruler, Grand Ayatollah, the pre-medieval Ali Khamenei do? Get angry at America? Threaten to annihilate another country? Start building nuclear arms? Stone women who commit sexual sins? Hey, wait, haven’t they done all that already?

As bad as most of the world’s countries are, those led by left-wing governments are even worse when it comes to defending democracy.

A primary reason America is “waiting” and “watching” and “monitoring” while Iranians are beaten in the streets of Tehran is that the country is led by the left.

Compare the Canadian reaction, now that it has a conservative government:

On the very next day after the Iranian elections, according to CNN, “Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon told reporters in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Saturday, that Canada was ‘deeply concerned’ about allegations of voting irregularities. ‘We’re troubled by reports of intimidation of opposition candidates’ offices by security forces.’”

Even usually appeasing Germany, now led by a more conservative government, had a sharper response than America. …

… The worst part of the liberal mantra, “Dissent is Patriotic” … is not that is meaningless. It is that it is apparently meant solely to defend liberal and left dissent. Dissent against the right is inherently patriotic.

Dissent against the left is another matter. To Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and to the New York Times Paul Krugman and every other left-wing commentator I have read on the issue, those who dissent against the Obama/Democratic Party health care plan are not only not patriotic; they are Nazis, mobs, white racists (according to Krugman’s non-sequitur thesis) and are always organized. They are activists sent by health insurance companies, the Republican Party, or by some other nefarious right-wing organization.

To the left, it is almost inconceivable that normal “hardworking” Americans, even Democrats, might find the idea of an immense increase in government intrusion into our lives frightening.

I wonder how Paul Krugman and Nancy Pelosi would explain my physician, Dr. Michael Richman. He is a thoracic-cardio surgeon in Santa Monica, Calif. who is liberal, who voted for Barack Obama, and who has disdain for most health insurance companies. Yet, he came on my radio show last week to announce that he deeply regrets having voted for Obama in light of the damage the president’s plan would do to American medicine.

Now, if Dr. Richman attends a Democratic congressman’s town hall meeting to protest the congressman’s support for the government taking over about 16 percent of the gross domestic product, will he, too, be dismissed as a neo-Nazi or health insurance company stooge?

The answer is, probably yes. In fact, that is exactly what happened — and captured on local Atlanta TV — in Georgia’s 13th Congressional District this past weekend. A local physician, Dr. Brian Hill, a urologist, went to a town hall meeting organized by Democratic Congressman David Scott. When Dr. Hill asked in a calm voice why the Congressman would support a government health plan in light of the failing government health plan in Massachusetts, Rep. Scott began yelling at him about people from outside the district coming to “hijack this event” and that those at his town hall meeting raising the health care issue should have had “the decency” to call the congressman’s office to set up a meeting to discuss the issue and not take over the town hall meeting.

As reported by WXIA-TV News, the local NBC affiliate, however, Dr. Hill does live and vote in the congressman’s district, had called the congressman’s office numerous times and got no response, and is not a Republican.

But such people as Dr. Richman in California and Dr. Hill in Georgia don’t exist in the Democratic Party’s or in Paul Krugman’s mind. Like most of the left since Marx, the American left today has created an image of the world to which reality is subservient. Left-wing theories define reality, not vice versa. And in that closed world, left-wing dissent is patriotic, while dissent against the left is fascistic at worst, or paid for by the greedy at best. …

… The very notion of an income tax is morally debatable. On what moral grounds can the state force a citizen essentially at gunpoint to give away his legally and morally earned money? Why isn’t taxation a form of legalized stealing? The obvious answer is that common sense dictates that citizens have the moral right, even the moral obligation, to vote to give money to, at the very least, enable a government to fund a police force, sustain a national defense, and help those incapable of helping themselves or of being helped by others.

But at some point beyond that, taxation becomes nothing more than legalized stealing. Obviously, people will differ over where exactly that point is, but no rational person disputes that such a point exists. No one could argue that a 100 percent tax — even if it paid for every need every member of the society had — was moral and not simply a form of theft.

So moral problem No.1 with taxation is the morality of forcing other people — under threat of violence — to give their money away.

A second moral problem is having some people give at a greater percentage rate than others. The biblical notion of tithing, for example, is entirely universal — everyone gave a tenth what he had. No one was forced to give half while others gave a tenth.

A third moral problem is allowing those who pay no tax (such as the federal income tax) to vote on how much others will be forced to pay. It is quite difficult to morally defend the fact that about half of Americans pay no federal income tax, yet they determine how much the other half will be forced to pay.

A fourth moral problem is that the higher the taxes, the more decent people become cheaters. One of the leading religious ethicists of our time, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of two volumes of Jewish ethical law, told me years ago when he lived in Israel during the height of its socialism with its correspondingly high taxes that he witnessed the finest citizens, religious and secular alike, having to cheat on taxes or be rendered impoverished. I have never forgotten that.

I know no one in America today — and I know extraordinarily honest and generous people, liberal and conservative — who does not in some way “cheat” on taxes — as, for example, reporting expenses as business expenses that are not really so. I place the word cheat within quotation marks because not all cheating is illegal. Some people figure out how to avoid paying what the law demands through completely legal, but ethically questionable, means.

At a certain level of taxation, virtually every honest person is reduced to cheating either legally or illegally.

A fifth moral problem is that the higher the tax rate, the lower the charity rate. This is universally true. The more people give to the state, the less they give to their neighbor — and even to members of their family — in need.

And sixth and only finally because of the limitations in size of a single column, the higher the taxes, the less people are inclined to work hard. Why should they? At a given point, people just conclude that work is for suckers. …

1. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Meaning: No more Lone Ranger America.

2. “The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.”

Meaning: The Nobel Committee wants no country to possess nuclear weapons. That an American president shares this dream and is working to achieve it excites the Nobel Committee — and the world’s left generally — beyond words.

Many people around the world — not just Americans — would characterize a world in which America and all other decent countries had no nuclear weapons not as a dream, but as a nightmare. But for the naive left-wing (a redundant phrase: If one is not naive about evil, one is not on the left) members of the Nobel Committee, the prospect of encouraging an American president to dismantle his country’s nuclear arsenal was too tempting to allow to pass — even at the price of appearing foolish.

3. “Obama has as President created a new climate in international politics. Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

Meaning: To the international left, as embodied by the five members of the Nobel Prize Committee, the United Nations is the beacon of hope for mankind.

To many Americans and others, however, the United Nations is regarded as a moral wasteland that rewards some of world’s cruelest regimes with seats on its Human Rights Committee, does nothing to prevent genocides (some would way say the U.N. actually abets them), honoring tyrants, and mired in corruption.

4. “Dialogue and negotiations are preferred as instruments for resolving even the most difficult international conflicts.”

Meaning: As the pacifist bumper sticker puts it: “War is not the answer.”

Oslo’s approach echoes what the British government under Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain believed vis a vis Adolf Hitler. But had Hitler been confronted instead of “dialogued” with, perhaps tens of millions of innocent men and women’s lives would have been spared and the Holocaust averted. Europeans tend to believe that evil regimes will act responsibly because of dialogue, not threats of force. …

9. “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

Meaning: With Barack Obama, we in Europe finally have an opportunity to end American exceptionalism.

The Oslo committee’s view is, tragically, true. Thanks to Barack Obama, America is for the first time is aligning its values with those of “the majority of the world’s population.” If you think the world’s population has had better values than America, that it has made societies that are more open, free, and tolerant than American society, and that it has fought for others’ liberty more than America has, you should be delighted.

… If the 1,990-page House Health Care Bill becomes law, the average American will receive worse health care, American physicians will decline in status and income, American medical innovation will dramatically slow down and pharmaceutical discoveries will decline in number and quality. And, of course, the economy of the United States will deteriorate, perhaps permanently.

However, we are also certain that there is one American group that will thrive — trial lawyers. The very existence of a 1,990-page law guarantees years of, if not more or less permanent, lawsuits. And the law actually specifies that states that do not limit attorneys’ fees in cases of medical malpractice shall be financially rewarded.

What we are seeing here, therefore, is something unprecedented in our history: Many trial lawyers will earn as much as most physicians, and fewer and fewer physicians will earn as much as successful trial lawyers.

Nothing better illustrates the reorientation — indeed, the transformation — of values that will take place if the Democrats’ health care legislation is passed. Thanks to trial lawyer/Democratic influence, for decades, we have been moving in the direction of litigation-based society. But with a Democratic health care bill, the movement will accelerate exponentially.

Much of our money, our innovation, our creativity and our ingenuity will gravitate from medicine to law. …

No rational person argues that society doesn’t need law or lawyers, or that all lawyers, even trial lawyers, do no good. That is certainly not what is being argued here.

But it does say something about a society when those who sue physicians and hospitals make as much or more money than those who heal disease. It says something about a society when it glorifies and rewards those who litigate while it demonizes and punishes those who produce the drugs and devices that keep its citizens alive and well.

This is part of the upside-down world the left is bequeathing to us and our children in the name of health care “reform.”

As the passage of the bill that will start the process of nationalizing health care in America becomes almost inevitable, so, too, the process of undoing America’s standing as The Last Best Hope of Earth will have begun.

That description of America was not, as more than a few Americans on the left believe, made by some right-wing chauvinist. It was made by President Abraham Lincoln in an address to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862. …

With the largest expansion of the American government and state since the New Deal, the Democratic party — alone — is ending a key factor in America’s uniqueness and greatness: individualism, which is made possible only when there is limited government.

The formula here is not rocket science: The more the government/state does, the less the individual does.

America’s uniqueness and greatness has come from a number of sources, two of which are its moral and social value system, which is a unique combination of Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values, and its emphasis on individual liberty and responsibility.

Just as the left has waged war on America’s Judeo-Christian roots, it has waged war on individual liberty and responsibility.

Hillel, the most important rabbi of the Talmud (which, alongside the Hebrew Bible, is Judaism’s most important book), summarized the human being’s obligations in these famous words: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”

What does this mean in the present context? It means that before anything else, the human being must first take care of himself. When people who are capable of taking care of themselves start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior beings. When people who could take care of their family start relying on the state to do so, they can easily become morally inferior. And when people who could help take care of fellow citizens start relying on the state to do so, the morally coarsening process continues.

There has always been something profoundly ennobling about American individualism and self-reliance. Nothing in life is as rewarding as leading a responsible life in which one has not to depend on others for sustenance. Little, if anything, in life is as rewarding as successfully taking care of oneself, one’s family and one’s community. That is why America has always had more voluntary associations than any other country.

But as the state and government have gotten bigger, voluntary associations have been dying. Why help others if the state will do it? Indeed, as in Scandinavia, the attitude gradually becomes: why even help myself when the state will do it?

Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are right about one thing — they are indeed making history. But their legacy will not be what they think. They will be known as the people who led to the end of America as the last best hope of earth.

Last week, a brief moment in time captured much that has gone wrong with post-’60s liberalism and feminism.

Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh of the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers was testifying at a hearing before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. At one point during his responses to questions posed by the Committee Chair, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the senator interrupted the general to admonish him about using the word “ma’am” when addressing her:

“You know, do me a favor,” Boxer said in an annoyed tone of voice. “Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘ma’am?’ It’s just a thing; I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it. Yes, thank you.”

“Yes, senator,” the humiliated general responded.

The oxygen was sucked out of the room by Sen. Boxer’s remarks.

It is hard to know where to begin in describing how reduced the U.S. Senate was at that moment. It is not due to differing politics that many in California are embarrassed to have Boxer as their senator; few Californians who differ from Sen. Dianne Feinstein are embarrassed by her.

To think that a body once called “the world’s most deliberative” was reduced to this juvenile level is to mourn for America. The immaturity of a U.S. senator needing to ask to always be responded to as “senator” rather than “ma’am” in an ongoing dialogue with someone — of equal stature, it should be noted — should be self-evident to anyone.

However, in case it is not, two arguments should make this clear.

First, people in the military are taught to call their superiors “ma’am” and “sir.” Thus, for example, a sergeant responding to a general will say, “Yes, sir,” to a male general and, “Yes, ma’am,” to a female general. Though not in the military, I always feel honored when a caller to my radio show says calls me sir. And I always have renewed respect for the military for inculcating that respectful form of address into its members.

To object to being called sir or ma’am by anyone, especially a member of the military and especially a high ranking member of the military is to betray an ignorance of the military and a tone deafness to civility that is appalling in anyone, especially a member of the United States Senate .

Second, and both more revealing and more instructive, is to understand how inconceivable it would be for a male senator to make such comments. Neither a Democrat nor Republican could imagine a male senator interrupting the testimony of a brigadier general to admonish him publicly, “You know, do me a favor. Could you say ‘senator’ instead of ‘sir?’ It’s just a thing. I worked so hard to get that title, so I’d appreciate it.”

If a male senator had said that, he would rightly be regarded as insecure, narcissistic, arrogant, and juvenile. Which is precisely why no male senator would ever say such a thing: He would know that he would be the laughingstock of the U.S. Senate. …

The reason we have too few solutions to the problems that confront people — in their personal lives as well as in the political realm — is almost entirely due to a lack of common sense, psychological impediments to clear thinking, a perverse value system, to a lack of self-control, or all four. It is almost never due to a lack of brainpower. On the contrary, the smartest and the best educated frequently make things worse.

One of the reasons for the ascendance of the English-speaking world has been that the English language is almost alone among major languages in having the word “earn.”

Those of us whose native language is English assume that the phrase “to earn a living” is universal. It isn’t. It is almost unique to English. Few languages have the ability to say this.

In the Romance languages, for example — a list that includes such major languages as Spanish, French, and Italian — the word used when saying someone “earns” money, is “ganar” in Spanish, “gagner” in French. The word literally means “to win.” In Hebrew the word “marveach” means “profits.” In German, the word “verdient” means “deserves.”

Obviously, it is very different to “win” or to “deserve” or to “profit” than to “earn.”

Since the 1960s-’70s, a concerted effort has been made to weed the word, and therefore the cultural value, of “earning” from American life. Increasingly little is earned. Instead of earning, we are increasingly owed, or we have more rights, or we are simply given.

Many American kids no longer earn awards or trophies for athletic success. They are given trophies and awards for showing up. These trophies are not earned, just granted — essentially for breathing. …

We also expect forgiveness to be given without being earned. Many people believe in what I call automatic forgiveness — the obligation to forgive anyone any crime, committed against anyone, no matter how many victims and no matter how removed from my life. Thus the pastor of a church attended by then-President Bill Clinton told the president and all others at a Sunday service that all Christians were obligated to forgive Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist murderer of 168 people. Did McVeigh earn this forgiveness? Of course not. So where did the notion of unearned forgiveness come from, especially unearned forgiveness from people who were not the victims of the evil being forgiven? It is one thing for me to forgive those who have hurt me; it is quite another for others to forgive those who have hurt me. G-d Himself demands that we earn forgiveness. The term for that is repentance. No repentance, no forgiveness.

Finally, the increasingly powerful culture of entitlement and rights further undermines the value of earning anything. The more the state gives to its citizens, the less they have to earn. That is the basic concept of the welfare state — you receive almost everything you need without having to earn any of it. About half of Americans now pay no federal income tax — but they receive all government benefits just as if they had paid for, i.e., earned, them. …

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

I honestly don't know just how Jewish (i.e., practicing) Bernard Goldberg is, but the CBS-correspondent-turned-whistleblower-of-major-network-media-bias is one of the most essential weapons in the arsenal against the liberal hoardes.

If you're not familiar with Goldberg's work, I highly recommend you start with his two books on media bias. The first, Bias, tracks his personal experiences at CBS and how he went from Dan Rather's longtime close friend to his arch enemy with one critical Wall Street Journal editorial. Goldberg's second book, called Arrogance, picks up where the first leaves off—with the media arrogantly denying the bias they possess. What makes Goldberg's works about liberal media bias particularly persuasive is that he himself has worked for decades in the trenches of the liberal media establishment. He has witnessed how they think, how they work, and how they live in a constant state of denial as to what they push.

Today, Front Page Mag released the transcript of a speech Goldberg delivered after the presidential election at an event called Restoration Weekend. The main part of the fantastic presentation is provided here:

[…] The mainstream media, or the so-called mainstream media, is always going to have its thumb on the scale because it's always rooting for the Democrat over the Republican. But this year, it was different. This year, the media jumped the shark because this year, without any embarrassment, they embraced one of the candidates running for president. They took a politician – a politician from Chicago, no less – and deified him. They turned him into St. Barack.

This time around, they weren't content merely, merely, being a witness to history; this time, they felt that they had to make history because this time they had a noble cause – not just to elect a Democrat, not just to elect a liberal, but to elect the first black man in our nation's history.

I don't know that they feel just the same way. I don't know that they would've had all of that emotion if the first black man elected president of the United States were Michael Steele, for instance. When Michael Steele in 2006 lost the Senate race in Maryland, I don't remember one reporter talking about how history was thwarted. It's because Michael Steele, unlike Barack Obama, is a conservative. And as far as liberals in and out of the media are concerned, a black man who is a conservative isn't a black man; he's merely a conservative.

So, how did the media embrace "the one," as Oprah called him?

Well, there was the NBC news correspondent who, without any hint of embarrassment, said that it was tough to be objective while covering Barack Obama because he spoke so well.

There was the New York Times that ran a page one story during the campaign, suggesting that John McCain was having an affair with a Washington lobbyist, and they based this story on two unnamed former staffers who thought that "maybe, possibly, I'm not sure but I think he may have been involved with the woman" – and this made page one.

The New York Times published Barack Obama's op-ed on Iraq and told John McCain, a man who was running for president of the United States, that he had to rework his.

And then during the acceptance speech in Denver, the commentary was incredible. I mean people sounded as if they were thrilled just to be in the same city as Barack Obama.

David Gergen, whom some of my conservative friends call David Rodham Gergen, said that Obama didn't even deliver a speech that night. What he did was perform a symphony. He said – those were his exact words – "It was a symphony." He said, "It was slow at times. It was fast at times. It was intimate. It was a masterpiece." If you were sitting at home watching this kind of syrupy sweet commentary on television, you could get diabetes in your living room.

But all of this is small potatoes compared to the classic of all classics during the campaign, and that came from Chris Matthews, who – forgive me for telling you what you already know – that when he heard Barack Obama speak, he felt a thrill going up his leg. This is not political analysis. This is a man-crush.

A month earlier, after Barack Obama won the Iowa caucus, Chris Matthews went on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and said --and these are his exact words – "If you're actually in the room when Obama gives one of his speeches and you don't cry, you're not an American." I hope all of you right-wing bastards heard that, fascist pigs.

And before he was done with the Leno Show, Chris Matthews morphed from Mr. Hardball into Miss Winfrey, and he told Jay, "If you're in a room with Obama, you feel the Spirit moving." I don’t know about you, but if I’m in a room with Chris Matthews, even if he's only on the TV set babbling in the room, I feel something else moving: my lunch, moving from my stomach up my esophagus and out of my mouth.

The worst thing that MSNBC did was during its hard news coverage. During the day when Sarah Palin was being announced as John McCain's choice for vice president, they put up a graphic on the screen in capital letters that said, "How many houses does Palin add to the Republican ticket?" This wasn't on the Jon Stewart comedy news show. This wasn't on one of their lunatic primetime shows. This was during the day during their hard news coverage on what is supposed to be a real news network.

Jay Leno had the last laugh, though. He said that after the election, the Obama people were throwing a victory party at their headquarters, MSNBC.

There was so much other stuff, we'd be here for three years. But let me just tell you about one other thing.

There's a young man at CBS News who I'm sure you haven't heard of. His name is Jeff Glor, He's one of their rising stars. To the extent that anybody cares about anything that CBS does, he's one of the people in the future. He did a piece called "Five Things You Should Know About Barack Obama." You're going to think I’m making this up. When I read this, I thought the person who sent it to me was making it up, so I tracked it down. This is exactly what he said.

"In addition to enjoying basketball and cycling during downtime, Obama loves to play Scrabble. Obama's job as a teenager was at Baskin-Robbins, and to this day, he does not like ice cream. This is a man who plays to win. No matter what it is, whether it's the woman he wants to date or elected office or board games, there is an ambition there. There is a determination."

Folks, you can't make this crap up. Now, it isn't just what they said about Obama; it's also how hard the mainstream media worked to either ignore or, at best, downplay stories that might've hurt Obama.

Let’s take a few examples….

Do you think the media would've paid more attention if it were the National Rifle Association instead of ACORN that signed Mickey Mouse up to vote? That's a good question, I think.

Do you think the mainstream media would've shown more interest if it was John McCain and not Barack Obama who had a relationship, no matter how flimsy, with an unrepentant terrorist?

What if this unrepentant terrorist had bombed not the Capitol or the Pentagon but a black church or an abortion clinic no matter how many years ago it was?

What would the media say if on September 11, 2001, of all days, the New York Times ran a story in which this bomber said that his only regret was that he didn't do more? What do you think the media would say about all of that?

How would the media play the story if it had been John McCain and not Barack Obama who spent 20 years in a church with a right-wing bigot?

What if it was Sarah Palin and not John McCain, who before a cheering crowd of supporters, said that the answer to our economic problems is a simple three-letter word, jobs, and then went on to actually spell J-O-B-S?

Well, what do you think, as a very funny guy who looked like Joe Pesci said, what do you think the media would do if it was Sarah Palin and not Joe Biden who said that in 1929, Franklin Roosevelt got on television to reassure the American people when the stock market crashed even though FDR wasn't in office until 1933 and television wasn't introduced to the general public till 1939? How would the mainstream media have played that story? Do you think the might've portrayed Sarah Palin as a moron or worse, as a ticking time bomb? I think we all know the answer to that.

Part way through the campaign, speaking of Sarah Palin, right after she was announced, something very, very strange happened. A mental disorder spread through liberal America, including many American newsrooms. This disorder became known simply as PDS, Palin Derangement Syndrome. PDS was a lot like BDS, which was Bush Derangement Syndrome, in which liberals foam at the mouth at the mere mention of the name George Bush. Palin Derangement Syndrome was a lot like that.

A few examples of Palin Derangement Syndrome:

Mary Mitchell wrote in the Chicago Sun Times that Sarah Palin "makes me sick."

Maureen Dowd wrote in The New York Times that Palin was our "new Napoleon in bunny boots."

Wendy Doniger, a professor at the University of Chicago, wrote on the Washington Post's website, "Sarah Palin's greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she's a woman."

Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, wrote a piece for Salon, the online magazine, "What's the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."

Also on Salon, somebody named Cintra Wilson managed to type these words as Palin Derangement Syndrome was eating away at her brain: "Sarah Palin has me and my friends wretching in our handbags. She's such a power-mad backwater beauty pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her, but in reality, I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism."

Now, you can Google it, as they say. The rise of Sarah Palin to PDS sufferers is akin to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany?

Somebody, somebody, please, call Jerry Lewis. We need a telethon. We need to raise money to fight this terrible disease.

I have a theory as to why liberals in and out of the media hated this woman so much. What drives them nuts, especially liberal feminists, is that this white trash pro-gun, pro-life church-going woman who didn't go to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton was and remains the most prominent talked-about woman in the United States of America. They hate that. They hate that. It wasn't supposed to be that way. The most prominent woman was supposed to be one of them, a liberal feminist.

There are more reasons that they hate her. Liberals, again, in and out of the media, they look at this woman and they say, what kind of woman has five kids? What kind of woman actually has a baby with Down Syndrome? What kind of woman lets her daughter go through with the pregnancy? What kind of woman is this?

And there's one more reason that they hate her, and Dennis Miller mentioned this the other day. Women hated her more than men hated her. Women hated her because she seems to be happily married and she's not neurotic, unlike so many liberal feminist women.

You know, what I've learned over the years, and this, again, has to do with liberal reporters but liberals, in general, they not only don't understand middle Americans; they don't want to understand middle Americans. They think that anybody who eats at a Red Lobster is committing a crime against humanity; anybody who flies the flag on the Fourth of July is a hopeless hayseed; anybody who bowls is a square. This wasn't about Sarah Palin at all. This was about them. This was their real pathology that they have no use for regular Americans.

Now, a few points as I wrap up because I know you guys have other things to do.

A few years ago, I spoke about bias in the news to a class at the American University, and after I talked, every question that I got was from deep left field from the students in the class. And then the professor said something at the time I didn't find especially interesting, but I did much later.

He said, "But isn't it the role of the media to effect change in society?" "Isn't it the role of the media to effect change in society"? I said to him, "Your change or mine?"

And he went silent because this supposedly intelligent guy, it never occurred to him that change comes in more than one package. The only change he thought was worthy of affecting by the media was liberal change.

Now, I put that out of my mind the way you try to put a lot of bad things out of your mind, but it came rushing back to me during this campaign because it occurred to me that's exactly what the media is doing. They are trying to effect change in society, their change, not your change, I guarantee you that.

As corrupt as the media was this time around the media did not defeat John McCain; Republicans defeated John McCain. George Bush, who strikes me as an eminently decent man, was an albatross around John McCain's neck. He got this country into an immensely unpopular war, and whether the surge works or not in the long run, and we all hope it does, the American people will not tolerate a war that goes on this long. John McCain was with Bush on that. John McCain paid the price.

The Republicans in Congress cost John McCain the election. In 2000, when they controlled not only both houses of Congress but when Republicans also controlled the White House, that's when Republicans sold out their conservative principles. They spent money like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store. They were out of control. And what did our compassionate conservative president do? He didn't veto a single spending bill. He paid for that, and John McCain paid for that.

I don't want to perpetuate the civil war that is now going on in our ranks. Some people think Sarah Palin was a good choice; 91 percent of Republicans do. I'm not at all sure that if she, 100 percent of Republicans, she can get 51 percent of the vote. That is going to be up to all of you to decide as time goes on. Reasonable people on that score may disagree. […]

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Open Letter to My Fellow Jews: The Democratic Party is not your religion (or anybody’s)

From the days of FDR, the vast majority of American Jews have identified with the Democratic Party almost if it were their religion. This included most especially secular Jews like me whose blasé attitude toward their faith and toward religious observance in general made such a replacement all the more important emotionally. This same Jewish majority also identified with the cause of social justice and, as Barack Obama among many others has noted, were some of the most active participants in the civil rights movement of the Fifties and Sixties. That was all how it should have been and was a perfectly logical and praiseworthy epoch in the development of our country.

Hello – those days are over! The events leading up to Monday’s anti-Ahmadinejad demonstration by Jewish organizations at the UN put the final nail in an already long-moldering coffin. Jews should no longer align themselves with the Democratic Party any more than they should align with the Republicans. They should act and think for themselves, devoid of ideological or partisan bias. They should first be Americans, not Democratic Party Americans.

The reasons for this are many, but paramount among them is that being hostage to one political party is tantamount to giving up your freedom and relinquishing your ability to confront reality and act in your own interest, not to mention the interest of others. Many Jewish Americans still do this for reasons that are at best sentimental and nostalgic, and at worst self-destructive. But a tipping point may be approaching. The virtual night of the long knives played out between the Democratic Party and various Jewish organizations surrounding the Iran demonstration, including allegations that party operatives were threatening the loss of tax exempt status over Sarah Palin’s appearance, with more unpleasant revelations undoubtedly to come, is obviously causing people to reconsider this allegiance to the Democratic Party that approaches fealty.

I urge my fellow Jews to keep thinking about this and not to retreat into the cocoon-like safety of an outmoded tradition. Change is difficult. But remember that Hillary Clinton – that paragon of the Democratic Party, a woman who calls herself a “progressive” (oh, desecration of the English language!) – was willing to forego the protest of the man who is arguably the most significant enemy of the Jews since Hitler for partisan and (most likely) personal pique reasons. How morally repellent is that!

And then Joseph Biden told us he was busy–too busy to protest a nuclear-armed madman who fervently believes that his mysterious Twelfth Imam (Mahdi) is destined to unite a chaotic globe under Allah. (And don’t tell me that evangelicals believe similar things. If you think there is an equation between evangelicals and Khomeinist Islamists, you need a cold bath.) [They’re way ahead of you, Roger. The Palin-hating Left, Jewish and non, has already been equating Palin with A’jad.]

No, those Democrats thought of themselves and their party first, the citizens of this country and the world later. When Republicans behave in a similar reprehensible manner, we should condemn them with all ferocity. But fellow Jews, stop being slaves to the Democratic Party. End this illicit love affair – not just for your own good, but for the good of humanity.

This open letter just kicks ass; however, I’m fairly certain that if any of my Obama-loving Jewish friends and family even read it, it will go in one ear and out the other. It takes more than an article to shake someone out of their comfortable well-intentioned but mortally dangerous ideological cocoon.

In fact, I believe nothing short of a mushroom cloud over Tel-Aviv will make a single bit of difference to the lockstep lemmings commonly known as Jewish American Democrats.

Monday, December 31, 2007

On this last morning of 2007, I set out with a seemingly noble goal: Select the best quotes from my favorite columnists’ articles, and post them here in a “Best of” format. I started with my idol, Jewish conservative Dennis Prager. Having read all these articles once before, I was certain that upon a second read I’d be able to find a couple of gems.

I was wrong—I had barely gotten to February when I had to concede that full articles were gems. Finding it impossible to do justice to Mr. Prager by selecting a mere few sentences, I am now forced to modify my plan. Here are my twelve favorite Dennis Prager articles of 2007, along with introductory or other key paragraphs.

I strongly urge every Jewish American to read Prager’s work, especially these cogent articles. On so many things he hits the nail square on the head. I hope they speak to you as much as they did to me having read them once during the year, and then again this morning.

There has been a concerted, and successful, attempt over the last generations to depict America as always having been a secular country and many of its Founders as deists, a term misleadingly defined as irreligious people who believed in an impersonal god.

It is also argued that the values that animated the founding of America were the values of the secular Enlightenment, not those of the Bible—even for most of the Founders who were religious Christians.

This new version of American history reminds me of the old Soviet dissident joke: “In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it’s the past that is always changing.”

High school cheerleaders must now cheer for girls’ teams as often as for boys’ teams thanks to federal education officials’ interpretations of Title IX, the civil rights law that mandates equal playing fields for both sexes. According to The New York Times, almost no one directly involved wants this—not the cheerleaders, not the fans, not the boys’ teams, and not even the girls’ teams. But it doesn’t matter: The law coerces cheerleaders to cheer at girls’ games.

In general, the Left does not ask the question, “What will happen next?” when formulating social policy. Not thinking through the long-range consequences of their positions is liberalism’s tragic flaw. […]

In the view of many liberals, “What happens next?” is a pragmatic, but not idealistic, question by which to guide social policy. In fact, however, no question is as idealistic as “What happens next?” Asking it means that social policy is made by noble and compassionate minds, not hearts alone. In the rest of life, thinking through the consequences of actions is called “responsible” and “mature.” Those remain worthy goals in public life as well.

I never thought we could see a new form of evil. After the gas chambers of the Holocaust, the tens of millions murdered in the Gulag, the forced starvation in the Ukraine, the hideous medical experiments on people by the Germans and the Japanese in World War II, the torture chambers in all police states, I had actually believed that no new forms of evil existed.

America’s news media, an amoral university, an opportunistic district attorney, and a police department that seems to have collaborated in framing innocent students all combined to nearly destroy the lives of three innocent young men—members of the Duke University lacrosse team.

Every day I see at least one car, usually more than one, sporting a bumper sticker that reads, “Buck Fush.”

Apparently, some of our fellow Americans on the left find this message to be profound and witty. But it is not these individuals’ presence or absence of wit or profundity that interests me here—both are so obviously absent, no comments are necessary. It’s their contempt for society and their narcissism that demand commentary.

Perhaps the major reason Jews have been able to keep their national identity alive for 3,000 years, the last 2,000 of which were nearly all spent dispersed among other nations, is ritual. No national or cultural identity can survive without ritual, even if the group remains in its own country.

Americans knew this until the era of anti-wisdom was ushered in by the baby boomer generation in the 1960s and ‘70s. We always had national holidays that celebrated something meaningful.

Whoever coined the term “Islamophobia” was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not “Muslim-phobia” or “anti-Muslimist,” it is Islam-ophobia—fear of Islam—yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.

Those who label Ann Coulter an anti-Semite do damage to the battle against anti-Semitism.

I say this as a committed Jew, a religious Jew, a Jewish writer and lecturer, … and a man who has fought anti-Semitism all his life.

There is nothing in what Ann Coulter said to a Jewish interviewer on CNBC that indicates she hates Jews or wishes them ill, or does damage to the Jewish people or the Jewish state. And if none of those criteria is present, how can someone be labeled anti-Semitic?

One of the most widely held beliefs in the contemporary world—so widely held it is not disputed—is that, with few exceptions, the world hates America. One of the Democrats’ major accusations against the Bush administration is that it has increased hatred of America to unprecedented levels. And in many polls, the United States is held to be among the greatest obstacles to world peace and harmony.

But it is not true that the world hates America. It is the world’s left that hates America. However, because the left dominates the world’s news media and because most people, understandably, believe what the news media report, many people, including Americans, believe that the world hates America.

We live in the age of group apologies. I would like to add one. The baby boomer generation needs to apologize to America, especially its young generation, for many sins. […]

… Most people get wiser as they get older. But not those of us baby boomers who still believe these things. Of course, many of us never bought into these awful ideas that have so hurt you and our country, and some of us have grown up. But many of us still talk, think, dress and curse the same as we did in the ‘60s and ‘70s. And we’re still fighting what we consider the real Axis of Evil: American racism, sexism and imperialism.

Thank you, Mr. Prager, for your inspiring and thought-provoking words. Looking forward to more in 2008.

Sunday, December 16, 2007

In December, 2005, a liberal listener called into Mark Levin’s daily radio show and mockingly asked exactly what his qualifications were.

For anyone familiar with Levin, the question is insulting and ridiculous. Most websites containing Mark’s bio state plainly that he “holds a B.A. from Temple University and a J.D. from Temple University School of Law.” What they don’t say is that he received that B.A. at age 19 and the J.D. at age 22. (And what degrees do Al Franken and Rosie O’Donnell have?)

Mark Levin is one of America’s preeminent conservative commentators and constitutional lawyers ... Levin has served as a top advisor to several members of President Ronald Reagan's Cabinet—including as Chief of Staff to the Attorney General of the United States. In 2001, the American Conservative Union named Levin the recipient of the prestigious Ronald Reagan Award. He currently practices law in the private sector, heading up the prestigious Landmark Legal Foundation in Washington DC.

In a nutshell, Levin is a dedicated scholar and unapologetically conservative. His first book, Men in Black: How the Supreme Court is Destroying America, is riveting and I would recommend it to anyone interested in constitutional law, no matter what side of the aisle you’re on. And if you’re a fan of heated debate on these issues and current events, you should try his show as well.

But most of all, Levin is a human being, as evidenced by his most recent book, Rescuing Sprite: A Dog Lover’s Story of Joy and Anguish. A bestseller since its release last month, it’s the heartwarming story of his family’s lovable recently-deceased dog. (When I showed my wife the book, she chuckled, “He does have a heart!”)

Of course, nobody’s perfect, and there are aspects of Levin’s show that have received criticism, both deserved and undeserved. I will readily admit that he can get worked up and impassioned at times, but I would argue that his anger is never gratuitous. His pet names for some liberals could easily be called mean-spirited, but he does have some humorous lables for his favorite senators, e.g., Ted Kennedy the “Cape Cod Orca” and the distinguished senators from New York, “Chucky Schmucky Schumer” and “Hillary Rotten Clinton, her Thighness.”

It’s without question that I have learned more about the Constitution, the Supreme Court, and the law by listening to Mark Levin two hours a day, five days a week, than I ever could by sitting in a college classroom. That’s what makes Mark Levin and his show unique.

Horowitz is also currently a strong voice against the threat of radical Islam. His book Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004) is an eye-opening account of how these two groups directly or indirectly cooperate to undermine American and Israeli interests. Just a few weeks ago Horowitz launched Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, mobilizing dozens of speakers to deliver speeches on radical Islam on college campuses throughout the country. Exhibiting their characteristic open-mindedness and tolerance for diverse points of view, certain student groups smeared the speakers as Islamophobes and attempted to disrupt their speeches. Horowitz, who himself came to speak at Emory University, was shouted off the stage by a mob of students and was ultimately unable to deliver his speech. (Mind-blowing, considering just weeks prior, the Jew-hating and Holocaust-denying leader of Iran managed to speak at Columbia University uninterrupted.)

Confronting the one-sided activism and infiltration of classrooms by radicals-turned-teachers at all levels of education is yet another of Horowitz's missions. In 2003 he founded the Students for Academic Freedom (SAF) and devised an Academic Bill of Rights to protect students from teachers who use their classrooms to launch political rants rather than teach the subject were hired to teach. Horowitz writes on this crucial issue in Indoctrination U: The Left's Assault on Academic Freedom (2007). His 2006 book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics is a disturbing exposé of teachers at the country's most prominent universities and their ties to radical,even terrorist, activity.

Needless to say, David Horowitz has acquired several enemies during his years confronting radical leftism and radical Islam. He is routinely denounced as hateful, divisive, racist, intolerant, Islamophobic, and fascist. Neither surprised nor deterred by these personal attacks, Horowitz continues campaigning to protect America, as well as Israel, from the threats posed by these powerful and well-funded groups. For that, he is truly a Rite Jew.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Dennis Prager is hands down one of my heroes. His academic field was Russian studies, the Soviet Union, and Communism. He is the author of a number of books on Judaism and ethics, including one of the most widely used books about anti-Semitism, Why the Jews.

Through his studies and experiences, Prager realized the classically liberal Democratic party he grew up with had changed for the worse. Today he proudly espouses the conservative views found mostly on the Republican side, noting often that JFK, the quintessential classical liberal, would not find a home with today's Democrats, but rather the Republicans.

I highly recommend to anyone Dennis's daily radio show on KRLA 870AM in Los Angeles or on-line. His topics are interesting, his comments insightful. He also publishes a weekly column on a variety of topics related to Judaism, ethics, politics, and current events.

Of course, Dennis has gotten a lot of flak from the left for his politically incorrect views. He has been criticized for his criticism of Islamic totalitarianism, his steadfast support of Israel against Islamic terrorism, and any viewpoint not endorsed by the left.

Dennis is often vilified by the left for siding with Christians on most issues, especially issues where the actions of secular groups adversely affect both religious groups. In 2004 he was the loudest Jewish voice to speak out against the decision by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to remove a tiny cross from the county seal under threat of litigation by the ACLU. (The pagan symbols on the seal were allowed to stay.)

Our country is better off because of thoughtful and eloquent Jewish commentators like Dennis Prager.